Google may eventually be displaced as the pre-eminent brand on the internet by a company that harnesses the power of next-generation web technology, the inventor of the World Wide Web has said.The search giant had developed an extremely effective way of searching for pages on the internet, Tim Berners-Lee said, but that ability paled in comparison to what could be achieved on the "web of the future", which he said would allow any piece of information — such as a photo or a bank statement — to be linked to any other.
Mr Berners-Lee, who invented the World Wide Web in 1989 while a fellow at CERN, the European Organsation for Nuclear Research in Switzerland, believes the next generation of web technology is likely to be far more powerful than the current crop.
What we will experience is similar to the "current craze" for social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace. The difference being that eventually, even these sites will be superseded by networks that connected all types of things — not just people — thanks to a ground-breaking technology known as the "semantic web".
The semantic web is the term used by the computer and internet industry to describe the next phase of the web's development, and essentially involves building web-based connectivity into any piece of data — not just a web page — so that it can "communicate" with other information.
Whereas the existing web is a collection of pages with links between them that Google and other search engines help the user to navigate, the "semantic web" will enable direct connectivity between much more low-level pieces of information — a written street address and a map, for instance — which in turn will give rise to new services.
"Using the semantic web, you can build applications that are much more powerful than anything on the regular web," Mr Berners-Lee said. "Imagine if two completely separate things — your bank statements and your calendar — spoke the same language and could share information with one another. You could drag one on top of the other and a whole bunch of dots would appear showing you when you spent your money.
"If you still weren't sure of where you were when you made a particular transaction, you could then drag your photo album on top of the calendar, and be reminded that you used your credit card at the same time you were taking pictures of your kids at a theme park. So you wouldd know not to claim it as a tax deduction.
"At the moment, people are very excited about all these connections being made between people — for obvious reasons, because people are important — but I think after a while people will realize that there are many other things you can connect to via the web."
This is fascinating stuff family. The details continue here.